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Most primary and secondary school computer education consists of learning how to use Microsoft Office and other proprietary software programs. Kids are being taught how to be users rather than creators of software.

This is true. Some of the highschools in and around my hometown offer little more than graphic arts using some sort of drawing program as the tech ed component for computers. It amounts to fun time on computers for kids. Most of them are just looking for an easy credit anyway, and so there isn't a lot of demand. Not all highschools offer the full computer technology curriculum apparently. I've talked to a couple of teachers who are teaching interfacing and robotics at the HS level, and this sounds like something they might like to integrate into some of the TEJ level course work and especially with the capability for interfacing with Arduino.

If you're looking for software that will encourage kids to think, rather than just clicking on a GUI, and that runs on a variety of platforms, there's a lot to be said for J, Ken Iverson's second language, available at:

Haven't tried Version 7.01 as yet. It's a vectorized interpreted language. Warning: learning curve is a bit steep. If you read the Primer straight through and smoke isn't coming out of your ears by page 80, you're doing it wrong.

On second thought after looking at this, I realize it will require mostly low level programming to really take advantage of the video oriented features of the Broadcom chip. Low level and machine code is fun to learn, for sure, but I'm not sure it would have inspired me to learn programming at first try. Byte code looks not so far removed from machine code, registers and stacks and the like. Low level languages like assembly tend to scare kiddies away from programming imo. I might think about using Python, BASIC, or C as suggested by r-Pi'ers themselves. Anything OOP/++ is definitely not a beginners language. I think that scared a lot of kids away, too, although there are some HS teachers using Java and OOP to teach programming. I don't agree with them that it's a good first language. I suppose not all kids are going to go on to do programming later in life, but good first experiences are important imo. if they can learn to think algorithmically and logically, then that's a worthwhile achievement in itself imo.

Ya but you're not talking about desktop OS anymore. Lots of embedded programmers reject Windoze and Mac not because they are proprietary but because they are not RTOS. Same with Linux. The best way to code, test and debug real time embedded apps will be on the target device in-circuit. Some(not many and too few actually) of the highschools are using Labview for robotics competitions. Those things are expensive and typically require sponsors to pay for the robot kits that come with all kinds of parts, motors, compressors, hydraulics and the software needed. Labview, for example, is graphical programming but requires an embedded toolchain like Wind River vxworks. It's used in industry. They don't have to code in C or even java, but that's a possibility with vxworks if they do eventually go into auto, telecom or manufacturing in general. This is the kind of exposure and tech skills the kids will need at some point.

What are raspberry pi coders proposing to use?

ETA: I like the idea of free software. And after the revolution occurs it will all belong to us anyhoo. ;-

Gentoo is the ultimate GNU/Linux distribution for geeks...although I don't think it's been ported over to ARM based processors...as used in the Raspberry PI yet.

So there's a project for you if you want.

Interestingly the Cuban GNU/Linux distro "Nova" is based on Gentoo. My understanding about Gentoo is that you can tweak and optimize it for whatever hardware you happen to be using. My guess is that the Cubans probably optimized it for older low spec hardware.

Quote:

Hector Rodriguez, Director of UCI, said that "[t]he free software movement is closer to the ideology of the Cuban people, above all for the independence and sovereignty.

There's also been a distro developed in Italy called Sabayon based on Gentoo but with the geekiness removed.

The first 10,000 Raspberry Pi computers went on sale this week and were sold out ... in seconds!

I didn't manage to get one

The backlog of orders I understand is around 100,000 world-wide and with all of the press coverage around the world, I'm sure there will be an even larger demand for these little devices.

The media in the Toronto area paid particular attention to the launch because students at Seneca College were heavily involved in porting the "Fedora" distribution of GNU/Linux over to the Raspberry Pi. Some Canadian media talked about the "made in Canada" software. That's not quite true, because several other distributions of GNU/Linux (i.e. Debian and Arch) have been ported over to the Raspberry Pi.

It was nice to see world-wide mainstream news coverage of a computing device designed to run free software. Most of what passes for "tech" news these days is crap about the latest i-Thingie or about what mega corporation is suing another mega corporation for patent infringement.

Thanks for that link Fidel. The later versions designed for the educational market will be built into a small plastic case.

I've got mine on order through a U.S. distributor (there isn't one in Canada yet). It was supposed to be shipped in early April, but there was a problem at the factory with the ethernet ports on this second batch of 10,000. So, I guess I'll have my little $35 computer a month or so later.

And if you wanted to I think you could make a simple plastic case that would cost less than that fancy one printed from CAD files. I've made electronic gadgets before and needed enclosures for them, so I bought black plastic hobby boxes at Radio Shack for a few bucks. I put a bag of desiccant inside to absorb any moisture, and drilled or cut some holes in the sides or bottoms where necessary. It didn't look great but it was functional. I'm guessing the Pi case will be clear or transparent for effect. That's cool, too.

Yes I'd heard about this...sounds like a fun little project and rather ambitious too! If it were me though I think I'd be inclined to do a "test run" crossing say one of the Great Lakes first. What would be a drag would be to have the thing flip over and sink say 10 kilometers off shore ;)

Inspired by the low-cost computing power of the Raspberry Pi, a team at the University of Southampton has used the ARM-based Linux computer-on-a-board as a building block for a low-cost supercomputer—racked and stacked using Lego blocks. And they’ve published a step-by-step guidefor anyone interested in creating their own Raspberry Pi high-performance computing “bramble."

Led by Professor Simon Cox, with Lego expertise lent by Cox’s 6-year old son James (who spent the summer learning to program on the Raspberry Pi using Python and MIT's Scratch), the team used 64 Raspberry Pi computers, each equipped with a 16-gigabyte SD card to construct a functioning computing cluster for under £2,500 (a bit over $4,000)—not including the Ethernet swtiches used to connect the nodes.